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Literature as a Game: Game-Play in Reading, Creating, and Understanding Literature

Literature is a game.

With this we have a larger statement than we at first may think. What could I mean by “game,” and what does this mean for “literature.”Defining literature is a certain need in this post-surrealist and post-modern time when literature has been strongly attacked by the surrealists, including authors such as Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer when he says that he is now an artist since “Everything that was literature has fallen from me” (1), and by many postmodern writers. In addition to defining “game”, we must differentiate between a game and play, for all games involve play – we play games – but not all play is a game proper. In Auctor Ludens, G. Guinness and A. Hurley (eds.) differentiate between paidia, or “play without rules,” and ludis, or “play according to rule and within set boundaries”(vii). But even here we must be careful, as paidia, besides being another name for a very rule-structured approach to education, is not otherwise entirely rule-free, as one can see anytime one sees children playing. There are unspoken rules that, when broken, can result in the child becoming upset. Te child who becomes upset when you start driving the parked car is upset because the rules of play he has set up have been broken. The parked car is to remain parked, until he decides that it is to be driven. These may not be the same kinds of rules as those of a game like chess – which have been rationally chosen to increase the complexity of game-play – and they may be changeable (much more contingent), but they are rules nonetheless.

Lawrence Slobokin points out in Simplicity and Complexity in Games of the Intellect that “all good games involve a complete, circumscribed, and simplified model of a world, consisting of a clear playing field with understandable and unchanging rules whose rich consequences are then developed by the players” (74). Let us take Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” as an example and see if it fits this definition. First, does this story “involve a complete, circumscribed, and simplified model of a world”? Well, insofar as it deals with but one family and their interactions with a limited number of other people, including Gregor Samsa’s boss, it is certainly simplified. Indeed, all literature greatly simplifies – dealing with one theme or set of themes, one person, a small set of people, one family, or a set of families, and their interactions. To this extent works of literature are circumscribed: they deal with one theme or set of themes, one person, etc., during a specific time, in a specific place. Kafka’s story is circumscribed by the time Samsa wakes up as a bug until shortly after his death. It takes place in a certain time and place – one positioned halfway between the early 20^th century Prague in which Kafka lived and Kafka’s imagination (that is, it is a Prague we can identify, yet it is one where a person can be transformed into a bug without people becoming too concerned about it) – and it deals with a set of themes, including isolation and exploitation. A work of literature is considered complete if it leaves the reader satisfied at the end. And that satisfaction comes about when the reader comes to understand the world better from having read the work – a satisfaction which can arise equally from having questions raised as having questions answered. “The Metamorphosis” answers many questions for the reader by the end – the fate of Samsa and of his family, for example – but it also raises other, troubling, questions for the reader: how much is your life like Samsa’s, living for others who do not even appreciate you, scurrying back and forth from work, living through the mass media (Samsa has pictures of women from magazines rather than of real people framed on his wall, suggesting he spends more time with mass media than actual people) rather than creating human connections?

Next, let us consider the second half of Slobodkin’s definition. Do we have a “clear playing field”? We have a playing field consisting of a world wherein people can turn into insects, in an imagined early 20^th century Prague. Kafka’s descriptions make the playing field very clear: we know what kind of people the Samsas are, the kind of place in which they live, and we know immediately – with the first line – that it is a world where people can wake up as bugs. Thus, Kafka does a fine job of defining a clear playing field. From this, too, we can see that the rules are “understandable and unchanging.” Rule: people can turn into bugs in this world. Rule: people in this world do not react the way we would expect people to react (they assume the bug is Gregor rather than assume that the bug ate Gregor). Further, the rules are unchanging: Gregor does not wake up at the end and discover it was all just a dream. In fact, this is why such tactics never work: it is a change of rules, and the reader justly objects to such rule-changes. The film Vanilla Sky fails precisely on this point. As for the “rich consequences” of these rules being developed by the players, we have to consider the first player: Kafka, the author. Having established the rules of this world, does Kafka investigate the rich consequences of his rules? One way of answering this is to point to how others have reacted to the story. Do other game players – readers – investigate the rich consequences of this world, commenting upon it and what Kafka is trying to say or mean? How many papers, including this one, have dealt with this story, uncovering its “rich consequences”? Different readers of different skills and interpretive approaches (strategies) have read Kafka’s story, have played this game in different ways, and have thus learned much from it – this is the “rich consequences” of playing any work of literature.

Of course, not all games are for everyone. Some people prefer checkers to chess, or chess to go. To some degree this can be attributed to taste; to some degree it can be attributed to knowledge of the rules; to some degree it can be attributed to differences in appreciation for complexity – or even the ability of a person to engage in certain levels of complexity of thought. Thus, when a professor of literature hears a student say that Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” is stupid because who ever heard of a man turning into a bug, that may be less a problem of a lack of imagination on the part of the student than a refusal to play by the rules Kafka has set up in his story. If there is no agreement on the rules at the outset, no game can be played – if a reader does not agree to the implicit rules any given author gives him, he cannot enjoy, perhaps cannot even understand, the author’s work. Without agreeing to the rules – and for us to have a game there must be rules and restrictions (Slobodkin, 70) – we cannot develop a strategy of reading. “A strategy is either a single response or a sequence of responses to the observed state of the game” (Slobodkin, 71), which may be the work itself, the work in the history of the genre (or of literature as a whole), or of the tradition of criticism. Too often, when literature professors teach literature, they put the cart before the horse, trying to teach a strategy when the rules of the game have yet to be clearly established or even agreed to. How, then, are we to address the student who finds “The Metamorphosis” stupid? To get the student’s mind in sync with Kafka’s we have to first establish the rules of the game. This means, of course, that we have to agree that there are rules and that there is a game being played. This has several consequences. As the editors of Auctor Ludens point out, seeing literature as game-play is beneficial: “By insisting on the author as “playing” his material, thereby strengthening a sense of authorial intention to set against deconstructional indeterminacy; or focusing attention on surfaces, and so away from psychoanalytical (or any other) searches for “latent meaning” ” (viii).

In order to have depth, there must be a surface. We too often forget this necessary connection. The surface is what we – and others – first see, and an explanation of that surface can make a student become more interested in looking deeper. Suppose, for example, that you like good food. There is thus a surface interest in good-tasting food that can lead you to learn how to cook – an amateur chef has a more in-depth understanding of food than someone who just enjoys fine dining. But a professional chef who went to culinary school understands food and flavor even more than the amateur. And the finest chefs in the world go so far as to learn how our taste buds and sense of smell work on a cellular and chemical level, so they can create the most exquisite dining experiences for their patrons. We must approach literature the same way. A hamburger-eater becomes someone who enjoys a petite filet mignon sauteed in red wine and cooked with shallots not by being taught how the taste buds and sense of smell work, but by being introduced to new ways of dining, by being introduced to such food in a comfortable environment, and by being introduced to foods they are familiar with, but challenge their taste buds. When I introduce people to sushi, I have them try the unagi (eel) first, since it is cooked. After they try that, they are willing to try the raw sushi. Dealing with surface issues – conscious rules of construction Kafka used – can help ease a student into at the very least learning to love to read works of literature, even if they never learn to become chefs – or – critics themselves. For those of us who are either chefs or critics, we should be happy to have as many “readers” of any level as possible.

The fact that there is a game being played implies that there is conscious choice involved on the part of the author. This neither negates deconstructionist indeterminacy nor unintentional unconscious meaning, but it does remind us that the author does make choices, and suggests that we should give the author the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming the author does not have the foggiest idea of what he is doing. A prime example of this fallacy is seen with Derrida in his essay, “Plato’s Pharmacy.” In this work, Derrida assumes Plato is unaware of the dual nature of the word pharmakon – as both a poison and a cure – in the Phaedrus because Derrida falsely assumes that Plato is an absolutist making definitive statements. Derrida thinks he is giving a Heraclitean reading to an absolutist writer, pointing out paradoxes in the text Plato was not aware he was creating, when it is Plato who is the Heraclitean (especially in this text, as we see when Socrates and Phaedrus step into the river and with the large number of paradoxes in the work), who knowingly used the word pharmakon to intentionally mean both cure and poison, as Plato intends to show the ambiguity and paradoxical nature of writing (the biggest paradox being that it is a written text giving what superficially appears to be an argument against writing). As we can see, at its worst and most extreme, deconstructionist indeterminacy assumes the author, even one as careful as Plato, does not know what he is doing – and that far more clever deconstructionist critics are needed to point out what the author fumbled into saying. This does not mean authors sometimes do not do just that. I once wrote a (as yet unpublished) short story wherein a woman is telling her husband she plans to leave him to pursue her career. She does so on a camping/fishing trip. As they are talking, I inserted a scene where he catches a fish – just to break up the monotony of conversation with some action. I was thus playing by the rules of the game of good short story construction. When I had someone read the story, the reader said to me, “I love how the struggle of the fish being caught symbolizes the struggle between the husband and wife.” Which, of course, it does – though I had not “intended” to do that with that scene. Ironically, it is an aspect of the story which would perhaps be overlooked by the average deconstructionist when looking through the language for elements of “indeterminacy.” Those who have read this story have all assumed that I put this image in as an intentional attempt at symbolism.

To better understand what happened, we have to understand that there is a hierarchy of “intentions,” ranging from the conscious to the unconscious, just as there is a hierarchy of rules by which we play any game – from conscious, socially constructed rules, such as that of the sonnet, to unconscious, instinctual rules we are born with and which develop in negotiation with our conscious, socially constructed rules, such as language itself and perhaps even poetry (see Donald E. Brown, Steven Pinker, Frederick Turner, and E. O. Wilson for fuller lists of human universals). Every story an author writes is full of conscious intentional choices – the consciously chosen surface rules of the story. But there are also less conscious intentional choices – those chosen because of the author’s familiarity with the short story tradition, creating internalized rules of prosody the author uses. Consider the example of my own short story. I engaged in a conscious choice regarding how to properly construct a short story and, as a consequence, found myself making a far less conscious choice in creating a symbol that nonetheless follows a rule of creating good literature (which is insufficient for making the story good literature, though it is nonetheless an element that makes the story more likely to be literary).

The fact that literature is a game, meaning it necessarily follows rules, suggests the author is far more conscious of what he is doing than many recent theories allow. But it can also show how some less-than-conscious choices are made. While The Who suggest, in full agreement with modernist psychoanalytical – including surrealist – and postmodern deconstructionist theories, in their song “Tommy” that the less conscious we are, the better we will play the game, since “That deaf, dumb, blind kid / Sure plays a mean pin-ball,” we know that the more conscious we are of the rules of the game – of any game –the more we can internalize them, until they become second nature, making us better game-players. All English speakers follow the rules of English grammar and syntax, which are internalized and unconscious in the vast majority of native speakers; but the best writers consciously know the rules of grammar and syntax, which allow them to construct the best sentences. They can then experiment to create unusual sentences that challenge us – the same way great painters have to first show their skill in photorealism before they can break the rules (otherwise, you are just dripping paint because you don’t have the skills to paint well vs. the work of Jackson Pollock) to create new games, or perhaps new ways of playing the game. The rules of grammar and syntax do not prevent us from fully expressing ourselves – they generate expression. Complete chaos is as uninformative and unexpressive as pure order. Complexity emerges on the rule-dominated borderland between the two. In the same way, the sonnet’s rules do not restrict expression – they release expression in a constructive, controlled explosion, like a car’s engine. Writing with explicit rules – making writing more game-like – is like playing soccer. Soccer has rules, which all the players are aware of and abide by, though any particular soccer player is not consciously aware of all the rules when the ball is coming toward him and he needs to pass it while keeping it on sides so one of his teammates can shoot for goal. For a good soccer player, the rules are so well-known that he can play without having to continually think of the rules he nonetheless plays by at all times. A writer writes using his rules of writing in the same way.

Anyone familiar with Andre Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto” and the idea of automatic writing may be tempted to see the surrealists as proof against this idea. Breton says he decided to use Freud’s methods of examination on himself, to try to obtain “a monologue spoken as rapidly as possible without any intervention on the part of the critical faculties, a monologue consequently unencumbered by the slightest inhibition and which was, as closely as possible, askin to spoken thought” (23), which led him to the idea of automatic writing, which would have an “absence of any control exercised by reason” (26). But I am convinced that the surrealists were in fact not very good surrealists most of the time, if the idea of automatic writing is taken as the ideal. Aside from the fact that they all wrote grammatically, the most basic rule by which writers write, the surrealists are particularly famous for using puns. A pun is one of the most purposeful, conscious uses of words one can think of, as Hayes, et al point out in Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition:

In puns, the terminal network evokes two parallel meanings at once or shares the same formal properties as another more conventional network with a different meaning. In higher forms of puns and word play, the meaning of the final network conflicts in an incongruous way with the conventional network, but also echoes it formally. (83)

Ethan White and Michael Dougher further point out, developing the Relational Frame Theory further, that “Reading comprehension and the use of more conceptual or theoretical verbal constructs that stretch relational frames (analogies, puns, jokes) require individuals to be verbally flexible, to extend networks in logical but novel ways, and to think abstractly” (333). A pun is a conscious – indeed logical, rational – play on words, intended to display the cleverness of the author . As anyone knows who has either used or knows someone who uses puns, it requires some effort to come up with one. One could argue that surrealist puns were in fact just “Freudian slips,” but Freud considered Freudian slips and puns to be part of a “defense mechanism” and that puns and slips of the tongue “reflected the interference of filters and lenses, erasers and amplifiers,” according to psychologists James Brody. This is problematic not just because the surrealists claimed to be using automatic writing to avoid such interferences, but also because, as Brody points out, “there are no measurements of “defense mechanisms.” They are like Jesus, you either believe in them or you don’t.” He goes on to suggest that “modern neurology and network theory” give better explanations of puns and speech errors like Freudian slips. Further, and this is connected to the surrealist concern with dreams, we see Freud’s theory of punning to be proven incorrect in yet another way in an article from A & S Perspectives / Winter-Spring 2002 in an interview with Scott Noegel, author of Nocturnal Ciphers: The Elusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East. Noegel is quoted as saying:

Freud found punning to be an important strategy to help him understand dreams . . . and he commented that it must be a universal strategy. But it’s not. He was influenced by the dream-related puns he’d read in the Talmud and Greek texts, which in turn were influenced by the writings of Mesopotamia and Egypt [where Noegel says the practice of using puns providing “diviners with interpretive strategies” first arose]. I can’t find another ancient culture that does this punning with dream materials. I’ve asked friends who work in African, Sanskrit, and other languages, and they have not come up with any examples.

Surrealist puns were clearly intended: in Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism we find him making conscious use of a pun when he says “everyone will go parading about saying that I live on the rue Fontaine (Fountain Road) and that he will have none of the water that flows therefrom” (17). Or consider the following complex pun made by Louis Aragon in a line of one of his poems: “Au bord d’un bénitier de bore ardent.” First, in French, “bord” (edge) and “bore” (boron) are homonyms, and thus worked as aural puns. Further, “bénitier” can mean either “holy water basin” or “giant clam,” and makes as much sense if we choose either meaning. I cannot, of course, know the mind of Aragon, but I find it highly unlikely that these were anything but conscious choices, that there is not, as J. H. Matthews puts it, “freedom from controls conventionally exercised by reason over linguistic expression” (33). I detect a great deal of control here. Aragon does have his reasons, though they may not have been commonplace ones. Matthews further points out that

The significance surrealists attribute to word play raises it to a position of prominence as a poetic technique which could not be justified, if they did not see in it a valuable condition of revolt. Word play, in whatever its forms, allows phonic suggestions inherent in verbal structures to take precedence over semantic values, either subverting them or ousting them altogether. The result is new meaning, obtained by undermining the old. (222-3)

Any surrealist who used a pun automatically broke out of his “automatic writing” (which could also be seen as a rule – a rule that required you to not edit and to write whatever came into your head, no matter what it was, but a rule nonetheless), and thus turned it into conscious play that abided by the rules of pun-making, wherein the wit of a pun lies in the surprise created by the ambiguity of meaning (Peter Farb, 90).

Further, we can see that the surrealists, as with any other literary writer, used what Johan Huizinga identified as the various play-rules of literature, “metrical and strophical patterns, rhyme, rhythm, assonance, alliteration, stress, etc. and forms (genres)” (132), a “range of ideas and symbols to be used,” as well as “special terms, images, figures,” and “image-making or figurative word(s)” (133). The surrealists, like the literary writers they were supposedly trying to break from, used every one of these rules, as their predecessors before them had. Breton himself gives us an example. Breton makes wonderful use of metaphor to break up our conceptual categories. If we take a look at a scene toward the beginning of the novel (6), we find the following situation: a man enters, who has, the narrator believes, loved the women he sees seated on a bench. Breton then goes on to describe the man:

He scarcely is at all, this living man who would hoist himself up on this treacherous trapeze of time. He would be unable even to exist without forgetfulness, that ferocious beast with its larva-like features. The wonderful little diamond slipper was headed off in several directions.

The narrator first comments that the man has a certain unreality and transience about him (to the narrator): “He scarcely is at all,” and “He would be unable even to exist without forgetfulness.” Is this meant to be understood objectively or subjectively? It is unclear, due to the presence of the first person narrator – but one whose style appears to create distance. There is a shadowiness to this man the narrator sees; but is the shadowiness real, or is it only because the narrator perceives him as shadowy? Or is the shadowiness real because the narrator perceives it?

There is also ambiguity in who the “diamond slipper” is: is it the man, or is it some woman the narrator is after? It is difficult to tell from the text at this point in the story, but the “diamond slipper” being separated by forgetfulness being described as a beast suggests the slipper could be someone else. What does it say about the narrator that these things are brought together this way? Is the narrator mad (as per the title)? Perhaps not. The man on the trapeze of time would swing back and forth in time (from past to present), but he only scarcely exists, even if forgetting were not a problem. Breton shows us just how transient we are to others: we barely register with them, and would barely register with them even if forgetting were not an issue. More: forgetting is necessary for remembering, for him to be able to exist for us. Breton captures, in this small space, the situation we find ourselves in amongst anonymous strangers in the modern world, which is filled with anonymous strangers. We pass in and out of people’s vision, barely registering with them (we have some irony here, since Breton says the man “scarcely is,” yet is able to register that the man barely registers with him), while hoping we will continue to exist in memory (the “trapeze of time”). But if we are only noticed for a moment, we will be forgotten: forgetfulness will eat away at memory as a maggot does a carcass – forgetfulness, “that ferocious beast with its larva-like features.” Breton metaphorically creates here the situation of non-registry with anonymous others. And the diamond slipper? A reference to Cinderella, who was searched after (remembered). There is someone whom the narrator remembers, and is after; but he does not know (any more than Prince Charming does) where she is (since she was heading off in several directions). The three sentences deal not with the man, but with the situation of remembering and forgetting, brought together in a way as, in Lautréamont’s famous (and favorite of the surrealists) phrase, “Beautiful as the encounter of a sewing machine with an umbrella on a dissection table” (Mad Love 123n9). We are forgotten – because barely registered – by most people. It takes something special (a diamond slipper) for us to be remembered. This is the situation we find ourselves in with other people. The Romantics believe “that the loved one is a unique being” (7), but Breton not only tells us that “often social conditions of life can destroy such an illusion” (7), he shows us this with how he himself perceives the man he saw.

Breton creates another Lautréamontean metaphorical conjunction with: “Big bright eyes, of dawn or willow, of fern-crozier, of rum or saffron, the most beautiful eyes of museums open so as to see no longer, upon all the branches of the air” (9). Eyes of dawn or willow? One suggests the beginnings of brightness, the flush of color, leading to blue; the other of airiness (willows are open, airy trees) and light green. Fern-crozier is the curled-up top of a young fern – dark green and brown – spiraling in a Fibonacci spiral. Rum tastes brown (something I noticed, and perhaps Breton noticed too – others have confirmed my observation), while saffron is yellow. So why not just say eyes of blue, light green, brown-and-green (hazel), brown, and yellow? Each of Breton’s images captures further elements these eyes project, beyond mere color. The sense of beauty and awe we feel at the dawn. The airiness of the willow. The feeling of depth and of being pulled in by the fern-crozier’s spiraling. The liquidity and warmth of rum. Saffron’s delicacy. Breton shows us the plurality within the unity of eyes (this is beauty, which suggests why Breton’s Lautréamontean approach is effective) that could not be captured by merely using the color names. By exploding the difference into such apparently different things (only four in reality: dawn, rum, museum, and various plants – there is, with the plants, unity among variety, creating two levels, a fractal depth, in his descriptive words), Breton draws our attention to their beauty with the strangeness of the objects in his list. This creates the “only beauty which should concern us . . . convulsive beauty” (Mad Love, 10), by challenging the our categories. He forces us to wonder what connects things like the dawn and willows, forcing us to reshuffle our categories. He draws our attention to the way we create concepts, questioning our conceptual categories, forcing us to imagine others. If beauty in art is, as Milan Kundera says in The Art of the Novel, “the suddenly kindled light of the never-before-said” (123), then Breton has certainly, in his Lautréamontean descriptions, said “the never-before-said,” which makes his descriptions of the eyes beautiful and, thus, an “unknown segment of existence.” A good deal of work is needed to discover what Breton uncovered – but I think it worth the effort, even though it belies Breton’s claim that surrealism is beyond the reach of reason, and thus of literary critics. In short, if Breton and the other surrealists had not used the rules of literature, they would not, ironically, be given the respect we now have for them.

Surrealism was one of the many attacks on what was seen as the basic flaw of literature (and of the world in general): the existence of rules. Rules were seen by the surrealists and other anarchists as being restrictive, preventing freedom of expression, and being oppressive. But the fact of the matter is that rules, while admittedly being restrictive, create, through that restriction, greater freedom. Rules are not necessarily oppressive – they are a necessary element of freedom. Imagine driving without rules. You can now drive on either the right or left hand side of the road. You do not have to drive in a straight line, and stop signs and stop lights are ignored or no longer exist. Who would want to drive under such conditions? Yet these are the conditions literary anarchists claim to want us to read and write by (the fact that this is not how surrealist literature turned out is further proof that they worked by rules). Could anyone imagine playing chess without rules? What would you have? You would have complete randomness, and complete randomness has a tendency to look remarkably identical. This is undoubtedly why so much surrealist literature – and all bad surrealist literature – sounds so much the same.

The surrealists tried to sell the world a set of goods that they did not themselves use. This was due to the fact that, before Breton developed the idea of automatic writing, the surrealists were already writers who well understood their craft. So we should not be surprised when their version of automatic writing looks remarkably like literature. They were writing by rules they had accepted so completely they became unconscious. Automatic writing becomes a problem when people who have not learned enough rules of writing start using it. That is when surrealist writing especially begins to all sound the same. Even Breton admitted that when he and Phillipe Soupault first tried writing using automatic writing that “All in all, Soupault’s pages and mine proved to be remarkably similar” (Manifesto of Surrealism, 23), which suggests that there is little difference between people at this level, making any work derived from such a source uninteresting after a while. Even more damning is the observation Breton makes that “The fact is that quite a number of parodies of automatic texts have recently been put out, and it is not always a simple matter at first sight to tell them apart from authentic texts, given the absence of any objective criterion of their origin” (The Automatic Message, 19). One is reminded of the embarrassment caused by Alan Sokal publishing his satyrical essay “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” as well as online postmodern essay generators. If one cannot tell the difference between a parody and the real thing, then the real thing itself is the joke. This is why, instead of creating a great proliferation of great writing, surrealism managed to create, after a while, a stagnant group of identical-sounding works. This is why writers mostly abandoned surrealism, except those undergraduate writing students who think of themselves as being radical, and just end up creating works that sound like all other undergraduate neo-surrealist writing. But if we look to surrealism for the message of using dreams, or working “to bring inspiration back into favor” (The Automatic Message, 16), or to respect genius (15), then there is still much to be admired in the surrealist message. It remains useful if we use automatic writing primarily as a source of inspiration. But if it is to be the source of finished works, history and the seemingly endless line of Freshman surrealists shows it to be very limited in scope. On the other hand, no two sonnets sound at all “remarkably similar”.

Rules are found at all levels of society. Without rules, there could not even be society. A pile of parts does not an engine make. This is not, of course, a defense of all rules of society, or even of all rules of literature. It was healthy for poets to ask why it was necessary for a poem to have meter or rhyme in order to be a poem. Why could there not be other forms of poetry? Why not Dickinson’s slant-rhyme? Or Whitman’s free-verse? But even Whitman’s free-verse has its rules. His rhythms may not be metrical, but he does use rhythm. He decided on other rules in word choice or in particular rhythms or use of metaphors. So even when it does not appear that a given author is using rules, we are oftentimes surprised to find he is. And this questioning of rules is one of the hallmarks of a great writer, whether it be questioning rhyme in poetry (or questioning the current prejudice against it), how characters or situations or reality are portrayed, the use of alliteration, the use of metaphors, the choice of words, or any number of other things writers use. Baudelaire is considered to be a great poet mostly because he challenged the rules of appropriate topics for poems in the romantic style. He maintained the romantic structure, the rhythm and end-rhyme, and many turns of phrases, then twisted them with the topics he used. Baudelaire is a great poet in great part because he was able to write a romanticist poem about a rotting deer corpse.

The necessity for rules in creating literature is not the only thing that makes literature a game. Let’s look at several of the functions of play, according to Johan Huizinga. Among the functions play performs, he has identified “training for the demands of life,” and “compensating for unfulfilled longings” (3), which one could argue (and Richard Rorty, among others, has) are indeed functions of literature, especially fiction. Further, play makes use of an “imitative instinct,” a ““need” for relaxation,” and acts as an “outlet for harmful impulses,” or as “wish fulfillment” (2). What does fiction do but “imitate?” Why else do we read literature except to relax? (Naturally, there are other reasons, like intellectual stimulation, but this does not preclude play, since chess is played for both reasons too.) As for the last two, we can come to the conclusion that this is the case based on the comments of many writers. A writer can do or say things he otherwise would not in the confines of his writing. He can be smarter, braver, a bigger villain, more attractive, less attractive, etc. He turns himself into what Milan Kundera calls “experimental selves,” in order to try out various scenarios. If pretending you are someone else is not play, I do not know what is (this is precluding, of course, you do not have mental problems that make you think you really are this other person). Indeed, the thing we do to pretend we are someone else, the performance we go to where we see people pretending they are other people, is called a play.

If we take Huizinga as the definer par excellance of what play is, we can see literature is very much a form of game-play. Just take several definitions of play and replace the word “play” with either “reading” or “writing literature.” Huizinga says play has a “profoundly aesthetic quality” (2), that is “is based on the manipulation of certain images, on a certain “imagination” of reality (i.e. its conversion into images)” (4), that “all play is a voluntary activity” (7), “we play because we enjoy playing” (8), “play is not “ordinary” or “real” life. It is rather a stepping out of “real” life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all its own” (8), that “the consciousness of play being “only a pretend” does not by any means prevent it from proceeding with the utmost seriousness, with an absorption, a devotion that passes into rapture” (8) such as Roland Barthes argues in his The Pleasure of the Text, that “play may rise to heights of beauty and sublimity that leave seriousness behind” (Huizinga, 8). Play “adorns life, amplifies it and is to that extent a necessity both for the individual – as a life function – and for society by the reason of the meaning it contains, its significance, its expressive value, its spiritual and social associations, in short, as a culture function” (9), which, again, Rorty argues in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Huizinga goes on to identify play as “distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration. . . . It is “played out” within certain limits of time and place. It contains its own course and meaning” (9). He also points out that “while (play) is in progress all is movement, change, alternation, succession, association, separation” (9), that play is either “a contest for something or a representation of something” (13), (and literature certainly does fit the latter definition of play) and that “in nearly all the higher forms of play the elements of repetition and alternation (as in the refrain), are like the warp and woof of fabric” (10). This latter idea is seen in the literary idea of bricolage, or the repetitions of words and phrases Kundera identifies as “theme-words,” which is necessary for a work of fiction to succeed and which convey information to the reader regarding the importance of a certain image or idea, but with which the writer plays in the construction of his work. Huizinga says of play what could easily be said of great literature, that it “creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. Play demands order absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it “spoils the game,” robs it of its character and makes it worthless. The profound affinity between play and order is perhaps the reason why play . . . seems to lie to such a large extent in the field of aesthetics. Play tends to be beautiful” (10). He further points out that the words used to describe play are the same words we use to describe the effects of beauty: “tension, poise, balance, contrast, variation, solution, resolution, etc.” and that play “is invested with the noblest qualitites we are capable of perceiving in things: rhythm and harmony” (10). Any work of literature with tension, poise, balance, contrast, variation, solution, resolution, rhythm, and harmony could be identified as being a great work of literature. One could even argue that these are the very minimum requirements of great literature. And if they are, and if they are elements of play, then, again, we cannot separate literature from game-play.

To sum up Huizinga’s definition of play and how he himself relates it to literature:

Let us enumerate once more the characteristics we deemed proper to play. It is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action, mirth and relaxation follow.

Now it can hardly be denied that these qualities are also proper to poetic creation. In fact, the definition we have just given play might serve as a definition of poetry. (132)

Or of literature in general. Huizinga goes on to point out that “the rhythmical or symmetrical arrangement of language, the hitting of the mark by rhyme or assonance, the deliberate disguising of the sense, the artificial and artful construction of phrases – all might be so many utterances of the play spirit” (132). He even states directly that “the creative function we call poetry is rooted in a function even more primordial than culture itself, namely play” (132).

Huizinga also points out that “the writer’s aim, conscious or unconscious, is to create a tension that will “enchant” the reader and hold him spellbound” and that “underlying all creative writing is some human or emotional situation potent enough to convey this tension to others” (132), and that “such situations rise either from conflict or love, or both together” (133). Is this latter not an accurate summation of all of literature in all cultures from all times? Huizinga then points out that if this is the case, the subject of all literature is in fact play, since “conflict and love imply rivalry or competition, and competition implies play” (133). So, as we can see, the very subject of literature is the tension between Eros and Eris (love and strife) is human game-play.

Literature is a linguistic art form, so the game-play nature of language itself, particularly in the creation of literature, should be addressed. Huizinga himself says that:

Language allows (humans) to distinguish, to establish, to state things; in short, to name them and by naming them to raise them into the domain of the spirit. In the making of speech and language the spirit is continually “sparking” between matter and mind, as it were, playing with this wondrous nominative faculty. Behind every abstract expression there lie the boldest metaphors, and every metaphor is a play upon words. Thus in giving expression to life man creates a second, poetic world alongside the world of nature. (4)

Let us consider these ideas more fully. Do words name things that actually exist outside the human mind? Much written has been about whether or not words actually signify, with the pendulum seeming to swing against the signifying nature of language. The problem appears to arise when people like Jared Diamond in The Third Chimpanzee ask, “how do you explain the meaning of “by,” “because,” “the,” and “did” to someone who understands no English? How could our ancestors have stumbled on such grammatical terms?” (153), implying that each of these words have no referent. Some, such as J. L. Austin, suggest that words that somehow do something also have no referent, and that since all words technically do things, they appear not to have a referent. However, Peter Farb starts us off on the right foot when he says, “all languages possess pronouns, methods of counting, ways to deal with space and time, a vocabulary that includes abstract words, and the capacity for full esthetic and intellectual expression” (Word Play, 12). Each of the above words do in fact have referents – every word has either a direct referent, an actual object to which the word refers, or it fits Farbs’ categories, which are themselves ways of referring to the world. In fact, any word at all definable is referential, and if a collection of sounds is not definable, it is not a word.

We can take any of Diamond’s words and show it has a referent. But first, let us define the word “referent.” Much of the problem of thinking of words as referring to something other than themselves comes from the way we have defined “referent” in the past, because referents are not necessarily objects. A referent can be a person, place, thing, or idea (the corresponding words being called nouns), the traits of these things (those words called adjectives), actions (verbs), the traits of those actions (adverbs), or the relationship between two or more objects (prepositions). These are the obvious divisions. But what about articles, like the word “the”? This example is the easiest, since articles are adjectives, and “the” is referring to a trait of any given noun we are placing “the” in front of. By saying “I watered the plant,” we are saying “I watered a particular single plant that, by my use of the word “the” implies this plant to be but one either in this house or that you were talking about.” The plant has all the above traits, without all this baggage. It is shorthand, and refers to all this that the person being spoken to understands. Just because we have been able to play with the language until we could come up with such shorthand as articles and “to be” verbs does not negate the referentiality of such words, or of words in general. The word “because” is a way of dealing with space and time, and refers to causality, which, throughout most of human history, was assumed to be a feature of the universe. Causality, things having a cause, or the idea of things having a cause, is an action, or a noun, respectively, depending on if you believe in causality or not, to which the word “because” refers. To use a word Diamond does not suggest, but that easily falls into the trap of being considered without referent, is the word “if.” “If” has a referent, because “if” is an idea; it projects the idea of a future and the idea of possibility. “If” says, “let me posit the possibility that . . .” and is a necessary word (in its various forms as found throughout the world) for any language in that it allows for the projection of possible scenarios. These possible scenarios have in a sense a “reality” to which “if” and other words can refer, since one could easily define ideas as imagined scenarios to test alternatives before trying them out in the real world (one could also define much fiction this way), and the ability to create alternative scenarios before taking actions (which would necessarily give any group that did this a selective advantage) requires the development of words that could aid in the communication of those alternate scenarios, or ideas.

The question may then arise as to why the exact word “if” was chosen. Another way of asking this: is does language accurately reflect the real world? The answer to this question is, in a sense, no. Why should any particular sound or group of sounds necessarily represent any particular object? This is obviously not the case, since all languages do not share the same words (or else there would be just one language). If we compare this with the fact that language – or the components that gave rise to language – certainly originated in our pre-human primate ancestors, whose calls (such as those for “eagle,” “snake,” and “big cat” in green vervet monkeys) in no way mimicked the referent, it is clear that the initial association of the vast majority of sounds with any given object was arbitrary. Indeed, the onomatopoeia theory of language origins is the weakest, least supported of language-origin theories. What are the word “if,” “by,” “because,” “the,” and “did” onomatopoetically imitating? After this initial arbitrary association of sound with object, you must have a family of users who agree upon that particular association of word with referent for language to work as language, just as happened with the green vervet monkey calls. From that point on, the users of that particular language, who, by definition, know of the associations being made between the words and their referents (not always consciously, of course, since, as stated above, one does not necessarily have to be conscious of the rules of ones game in order to nonetheless abide by them), will recall the associations between word and referent when they hear the groups of sounds, meaning the language, among the users of that language, now does reflect the real world. So the choice of the sound “if” to refer to what the word “if” refers was arbitrary (keeping in mind that the need for a word like “if” was not arbitrary), which does not necessarily mean that the word “if” does not have referentiality for users of the English language.

All of this is necessary to understand Huizinga’s statement that “poetry continues to cultivate the figurative, i.e. image-bearing, qualities of language, with deliberate intent” (137). Literature is not only playing with words, but through that “what poetic language does with images is to play with them” (134). Literature plays with images through the use of language that makes reference to actual things (remembering an idea is an abstract thing), actions, or qualities. Great literature makes good use of this play element, playing as much with words and sentence structures as with images, form, ideas, and, in fiction especially, plot (which, as noted above, always involves some sort of element of human game-play) and character. While humans are in a continual state of play in regards to language – certain sounds are playfully associated with ideas, actions, objects we perceive, as well as with each other – literature is the play of language made more stylized and, therefore, made into an even more complex game. Any book or poem where the element of play is minimized – such as the formulae of romance novels, where all an author really does is plug new names into already-created slots, with the first sex scene always on a certain page, etc., thus preventing true creativity, since a recipe is not the same thing as rules – can be considered outside the realm of great literature. This, in fact, could be considered a good working definition of literature: literature is any text in which the writer of the text has maximized the game elements in that particular text, which means he has set up rules for himself (and accepted other rules necessary for the text to be the particular form in question), and played with language and images and, for fiction, characters and plot, within those rules.

While this does allow us to make some sort of determination of what constitutes great literature without the problems created by complete subjectivity, this does not mean that any given reader must like the particular rules an author chose to write with. A writer invites readers into the game he has played with the words he has used, but a reader has to agree to the rules of the game the author has constructed. This brings us to the idea of an implied reader for any given work, since one could easily see agreement to the author’s rules as the reader essentially having the same taste as the author (as well as other implied readers). Naturally, if you refuse to agree to the author’s rules, you will dislike the work. Readers also bring their own rules to the game of reading. These rules are historically, socially, and personally determined (formed in part by the reader), and include their own definitions of literature. The role of the professor of literature, then, could be seen as helping students to learn to play by as many new rules as possible, thus expanding the students’ definition of literature and their ability to appreciate more forms of literature. Further, for the true student of literature, literary theory could be seen as acquiring a new set of rules to take to the game of reading, such as the rules of reading historically, socially, postcolonially, and using formalism, New Criticism, postmodernism, evolution, etc. Or even by understanding that authors are playing a game.

How can this understanding help us to understand literature better? By understanding that the author is playing a game, we can look for places where such play is obvious, where the language is tweaked, where the author has set up rules, etc. It would be almost too easy to talk about the play element in the works of Cervantes, Rabelais, Laurence Sterne, Milan Kundera, or in lyrical poets. If I am right in that understanding literature as a form of play will help us to understand it better, it should work on unobvious as well as obvious texts – the less obvious, the better. Further, I want to discuss an English-language writer, so the play with the language itself would be obvious. This is why I have chosen to discuss one of the great works of the Naturalist movement in England, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

Hardy is fond of allusions – he continually plays with suggestions and fragments of other works. In Jude, Hardy makes several allusions to the Bible. He uses an allusion to Luke 23:49 where, when Christ was crucified, “all his acquaintances . . . stood afar off, beholding these things,” when he says that “The regular scholars, if the truth must be told, stood at the moment afar off, like certain historic disciples” (10). Hardy is telling us that these scholars will, like Peter did with Jesus, deny Jude, as Jude is directly denied in a letter from one of the college Masters (95). By playing with the reader, Hardy is telling the reader (for those paying attention) that Jude will be shunned by what he loves most just as Jesus was shunned by those whom He loved most.

Of course, allusions are not used by Hardy merely to foreshadow. Hardy creates a very powerful image of Phillotson when he says that, “In the glow he (Jude) seemed to see Phillotson promenading at ease, like one of the forms in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace” (20). It also tells us that Phillotson, like the three brothers thrown in the furnace, accepts his fate and, because of that, will be rewarded. What would have hurt others (as the flames would for anyone other than the three brothers) does not appear to hurt him because of his love. We can see this looking back, but this allusion gives us a hint about Phillotson’s character.

Another way Hardy plays with language is by using rhyme and rhythm. I was surprised to find Hardy using rhyme and rhythm in this otherwise very prosaic novel. Thus, we should pay attention when Hardy breaks into a rhyme and rhythm pattern. On 158 and 159, Hardy uses rhyme to emphasize things that are being particularly noticed by Jude. Talking of the picturesque English countryside, he says it is “being as sudden a surprise to the unexpectant traveler’s eyes as the medicinal air is to his lungs” (158). Here we can see the rhyme of “surprise” and “eyes,” as well as the very rhythmical line that contains them. It catches us by surprise just as much as the scenery is supposed to take the traveler’s eyes by surprise. On 159, we see the scholars Jude wants to become being emphasized again by rhyme when he says Jude saw their “black, brown, and flaxen crowns” over the sills. The lyricism here helps convey the romantic way Jude thinks of scholarship. On 227, Hardy uses end-rhyme to emphasize a particular theme-statement: “. . . there used to arise among wheeled travelers, before railway days, endless questions of choice between the respective ways.” The quote is in a passage that is literally about travel in England, but the lyricism and rhyme put particular emphasis on this line. Why? Hardy seems to have done this to draw attention to this particular phrase, since the novel is in great part a commentary on the “endless questions of choice between the respective ways” people can chose to believe the world exists, as an Idealist or a Materialist world, since at least the time of Plato and Aristotle.

Hardy uses in one particular passage a form of lyricism without end-rhyme that, in the way he ends it, tells the reader exactly what is going to happen in the novel. To see this, one must see the passage in its entirety:

‘It is odd,’ she said, in a voice quite changed, that I should care about that air’ because – ’

She played on, and suddenly turned round; and by an unpremeditated instince each clasped the other’s hand again.

She uttered a forced little laugh as she relinquished his quickly. ‘How funny!’ she said. ‘I wonder what we both did that for?’

‘And they rule thoughts. . . . Isn’t it enough to make one blaspheme that the composer of that hymn is one of the most commonplace men I ever met!”

This back-and-forth between Sue and Jude is very lyrical all the way to the end, when Jude finally end it with his “dryly” said line. Consider the amount of information Hardy gives us in these playfully-rendered lines. First, we see that Hardy understands their relationship to be one of play when he says Sue “played on” with the back-and-forth. Further, lyricism conveys information to a reader – it tells the reader that there is a particular unity happening in the lyrical lines. And the way Hardy ends it, with what Jude “said dryly,” and the fact that he said it dryly, conveys further information to the reader – Sue and Jude will be in agreement through most of the novel, but this lyrical existence together will, in the end, come to an end. Thus, beyond the words, which also tell us how their relationship will end, the way those words are written, the way Hardy had Sue and Jude speak to one another here, tells us a great deal about how the plot of the novel will unfold. By playing with rhythm, Hardy tells us a great deal about what to expect as the plot unfolds: that while Jude and Sue are in sync throughout most of the novel, a day will come when they are no longer in sync, and, when that happens, their relationship, like the lyricism between them in this passage, will end.

There are many other play elements in Hardy’s novel, ranging from the use of irony – a very conscious form of play – such as on 222, when he says “After this exhilarating tradition. . .” after a passage that expressed anything but exhilaration – to open references and direct quotes from several poets, particularly when he uses a section of another’s poem to describe something rather than describing it himself, and authorial self-reference to him writing a story (such acknowledgment of writing a story within the story is a form of playing with the reader’s expectations) on 256 when he had Jude say “‘I may do some good before I am dead – be a sort of success as a rightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story,’” which is undoubtedly Hardy’s intention in having written this story, and the playful repetition of words, phrases and ideas (he reiterates the idea that no one believes Sue and Jude are married because they get along so well, and that, therefore, married people are not supposed to get along, several times in the novel). As Huizinga states:

What constitutes the formal poetic element is the assonance which, by repeating the same word or a variation of it, links thesis to antithesis. The purely poetic element consists in allusions, the sudden bright idea, the pun or simply in the sound of the words themselves, where sense may be completely lost. Such a form of poetry can only be described in terms of play, though it obeys a nice system of prosodic rules. (122)

As stated above, we can certainly see Hardy engaging in each of these elements Huizinga identifies (though one could suppose that identifying the “sudden bright idea” in a work of art would necessarily be far more difficult to do than any of the rest). We can also see Hardy playing with ideas in this story by having Sue represent Idealist philosophy, particularly in her views on love, and Jude represent a more evolutionary view of love, thus representing Materialism. Rather than writing a philosophical work condemning Idealism, Hardy has chosen to write a work of fiction where two characters represent these two ways of viewing the world, and having them interact. He has chosen, instead, the most playful way of presenting these ideas and, in presenting these ideas, has played with the language and the structures of the novel in order to emphasize the themes of his novel. By continually playing with how his characters are presented in Jude, and by playing with the language in the novel, Hardy shows himself to be a great literary writer.

Finding places where Hardy is obviously playing with the language, ideas, or elements of story-telling, such as allusions (which seem to be his favorite play element) can help us uncover elements of the story we may have otherwise overlooked. By asking “why does Hardy make this line rhyme, or read so lyrically, or have alliteration here, or make this particular allusion or have this particular quote?” we can uncover the themes, both intended and unintended, in this novel. This method of literary analysis and understanding works best if the work is analyzed in its original language, as is true of any form of literary analysis with such a strong emphasis on the language itself, though there are still play elements of any given work of literature that can survive translation, including themes, overall ways of presenting character and plot, and even certain metaphors (as we saw with Kafka’s Metamorphosis).

Game theory uncovers the rules of complex systems. Complex systems – including social and biological systems – are games, meaning they have rules. Game theory goes against anarchist views that insist on opposing the very concept of rules. Anarchists see rules as limiting, preventing freedom. But rules are what give us “degrees of freedom.” Nietzsche points out that rules are necessary for every form of morality, and every art form has used and needed rules. “What is essential and inestimable in every morality is that it constitutes a long compulsion: to understand Stoicism or Port-Royal or Puritanism, one should recall the compulsion under which every language so far has achieved strength and freedom—the metrical compulsion of rhyme and rhythm” (BGE 188). He goes so far as to say that “all there is or has been on earth of freedom, subtlety, boldness, dance, and masterly sureness, whether in thought itself or in government, or in rhetoric and persuasion, in the arts just as in ethics” developed only because of rules – that the use of rules lies in nature itself, meaning rules are natural. It is through living by rules that we make it “worth while to live on earth; for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality.” Nietzsche rejects living without rules. But which rules? The tacit question asked by game theory is: “what rules make for the best games?” But it also asks: “what rules would evolve to ensure survival of the game?” – whether that game is a species or a ritual, an economic system or a work of literature. “Game theory shows how people make decisions about what to purchase and when and the rationale for seeing goals or rewards” (Barry Richmond, et al, Science 11 July 2003, 179). That is, “Our sense of which behavior to choose to reach a goal or obtain a reward is based on the perceived value of the reward, the effort needed to obtain it, and our previous experience about the likelihood of success” (179). Which raises the questions of what the “goal” of a work of art is, and what “reward” we get from that work of art, since a behavior’s existence suggests there is a goal and/or reward to be achieved/received that must have been important enough for us to have been pursuing it from prehistory to the present day. We will not act if we do not perceive that the reward we will receive is sufficient. As Ludwig von Mises points out:

Action is always directed toward the future; it is essentially and necessarily always a planning and acting for a better future. Its aim is always to render future conditions more satisfactory than they would be without the interference of action. The uneasiness that impels a man to act is caused by a dissatisfaction with expected future conditions as they would probably develop if nothing were done to alter them. In any case action can influence only the future, never the present moment that with every infinitesimal fraction of a second sinks down into the past. Man becomes conscious of time when he plans to convert a less satisfactory present state into a more satisfactory future state. (100)

We would not create works of art or literature or participate in viewing/reading/listening to art/literature/music if it did not reward us. That is why l’art pour l’art is neither achievable nor desirable. But these questions raised by game theory are really the same question. Formulating it the first way makes it clear how it can be applied to art and literature. The critic uncovers the rules the artist used (consciously or not) to create the work of art or literature. Formulating it the second way shows us how game theory can help us understand the source of rules, from the Laws of Physics to the rules of grammar. It shows that more rules are needed for more complex games. Only a few are needed at the quantum level, but with each increase in complexity, more rules emerge – and are needed – until one gets to human social systems, which need thousands, if not millions, of rules. And it shows the necessity of rules to even have a game. Rules give us freedom and make us creative. Game theory shows that, no matter the scale, rules are necessary – but the more complex the system, the more complex the rules that are needed. Many good rules (note the word “good” here – it is not the number of rules so much as the kind, those that generate more moves, not less) give us many more degrees of freedom. This is why chess is a better, more complex game than checkers, though both are played on the same board. And this is why works like Jude the Obscure is better than even the best roman novel, though both are kinds of novels, and both are written in the same language.

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